Marketing Campaign

I recently saw an estimate that 20 percent of B2B marketing organizations today use marketing automation technology. But how many of those are using it effectively? I suspect that's a much smaller number.

It's a shame, since marketing automation can offer so many benefits when it's used effectively. And when it's not used effectively? Well, let's just say there are easier ways to waste money if that's your goal.

With that in mind, here are eight of the most common mistakes companies make when they implement a marketing automation solution. Avoid these errors, and you'll be far more likely to reap measureable benefits.

1. Fuzzy prospect profiles. You can't do lead generation without a clear lead profile. Get your stakeholders together, talk to existing customers, and build your ideal lead persona.

2. A lack of interesting content. Content marketing is the fuel that powers your marketing campaign. And remember: Quality content serves the customer's needs first, not your own needs.

3. Lack of teamwork. Your sales and marketing teams need to collaborate on every aspect of a marketing automation project. When in doubt, it's better to over-communicate than it is to risk misunderstandings.

4. Failing to document. I don't mean software documentation - I mean documenting the process you use to build and implement your lead-gen campaign.

5. Not getting high-level buy-in. Marketing automation can affect your entire organization. That means you need a high-level champion to shepherd the project and to communicate clear, company-wide goals.

6. Building unrealistic expectations. Marketing automation can drive tremendous ROI and energize your marketing efforts. But that doesn't make it cheap or easy - and suggesting otherwise just sets you up for failure.

7. Failing to use metrics. A marketing automation solution gives you access to a remarkable set of metrics. Use them to get constant, actionable feedback on your B2B marketing campaign.

8. Not updating your website. Sooner or later, all marketing roads lead to your company's website. And nothing will derail a marketing automation project faster than an outdated or hard to use site that drives away prospects.

Email is a powerful and effective marketing tool. It's incredibly affordable and extremely flexible. Used properly, it's unbeatable.

Used badly, it's a recipe for disaster. I see way too many small businesses that jump into it without understanding the most basic ground rules. And they pay the price.

So let's go back to school. Here are seven basic principles that should guide every email marketing campaign.

1. Get permission. This isn't optional. Spamming a customer will turn your business into a pariah. It can also get you sued if you violate the federal CAN-SPAM law. You can manage the permission process yourself, or you can work with reputable marketing partner.

2. Keep it clean. A "clean" list of email addresses will be targeted to your specific industry niche, product offering, or customer segment. The cleaner your list, the higher your response rates - and your ROI - will be.

3. Take your time. Many companies use "drip" email marketing campaigns to build successful, long-term customer relationships. These campaigns deliver value to the recipients (for example, a whitepaper or discount offer) while setting the stage for a series of additional communications.

4. Keep it simple. Some of your customers will respond to rich HTML or graphical email. Some dislike that approach - or they simply filter it out. Meet your customers halfway by allowing them to set their email preferences, or deliver plain-text email with links to rich-text versions.

5. Don't wear out your welcome. If a customer wants off your list, then of course you'll comply. But also consider removing a customer if they simply don't respond to your email over a specific number of messages or period of time. You're more likely to annoy them than you are to win them over with even more email.

6. Remember: Content is king! As I said in a previous post, quality content is the single most effective marketing tool most companies will ever use. Use email to deliver useful, interesting content - not a series of one-off, hard-sell sales pitches.

7. Experiment, experiment, experiment. Email is a wonderful place to try out new types of content, offerings, messages, and other options. This approach can be especially helpful if you're using a marketing automation tool that can capture and manage feedback from your email marketing experiments.

Marketing analytics tools today can produce mountains of data. Whether you're using a free tool like Google Analytics or a full-fledged marketing automation system, it's tempting to assume that quantity equals quality.

It doesn't. In fact, too much data can sink your B2B marketing strategy - and it'll drive you nuts in the process.

Choosing the right metrics for your own digital marketing campaign is a tough balancing act. To some extent, it depends upon your industry, your business model, and your individual marketing goals. But I'll help you get started by introducing some of the key metrics that can deliver useful, cost-effective B2B marketing insights.

For the sake of clarity, let's break these down into two categories: One related to search-engine optimization (SEO) and Web traffic; the other dealing with social media.

Key SEO and Web Metrics

Total organic traffic. By this, I mean traffic to your website from all sources - including search and social media.

Search-engine rankings. This is one of the core elements of any marketing-metrics package.

Popular search phrases. Another vital metric, since it creates a feedback loop for your website keyword-optimization strategy.

Time on-site and bounce rates. Bounce rates tell you, among other things, that people who find your site either don't get what they expect or don't like what they get. Either way, it's vital feedback.

Most popular pages. Bread-and-butter metrics like page views and organic traffic may be more important, but I would argue this one is just as essential.

Social Media Metrics

Subscriber trends. How many people subscribe to your blog, news feed, or other content via RSS or email? These folks are vital to your social marketing strategy, and they're worth their weight in virtual gold.

Conversion ratios. How many visitors to your blog or forum become subscribers?

Followers/fans. Another obvious metric, and one you should take very seriously.

Referral sources. Which social-media sources deliver quality traffic? How do Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, and other sites figure in the mix?

Search-engine traffic. I think this is especially important for blogs, since a growing body of unique content (something you're creating, right?) should drive a corresponding increase in search traffic.

For every metric I mentioned here, there are at least five more I could have discussed. But that's the point: There's almost no end to this process, and it's way too easy to get caught up in the numbers, rather than focusing on what they can tell you.

Start with a small group of metrics, learn how to analyze them, and constantly tweak your website, your content, and your digital marketing campaigns based on the feedback they provide. It's a slow process at first, but it will pay big dividends over time.

I recently came across a study that found 82 percent of all companies now use content marketing as part of their B2B marketing strategies. That's more than the number using search engine marketing - and twice as many as the number using print, TV, or radio advertising.

I'm not surprised. You shouldn't be, either.

Content marketing is a simple concept. It's the process of creating original content - blogs, videos, white papers, and other assets - to drive lead generation and promote a company's brand. It also serves to establish a company as a subject-matter expert and a thought leader in its space.

Why is content marketing so popular today? There are a few reasons.

1. It's inexpensive. Or perhaps I should say it's cost effective, since that's just as important. Some of the most effective marketing content you can create - blog posts - cost little or nothing to produce. How much did your last broadcast media campaign cost?

2. You can measure the ROI. In fact, you can measure your content marketing ROI in excruciating detail, using metrics that quantify your lead generation, conversion rates, repeat visitors, and other key indicators.

3. You focus on the customer's needs. Promoting a product or service isn't usually a conversation; it's a monologue. Customers get sick of that fast. Content marketing allows you to serve customers by sharing your knowledge, experience, and thought leadership on topics they care about.

4. It's incredibly flexible. Your ability to conceive, launch, and scale a content marketing strategy is limited only by your imagination - not by your budget. In fact, some experts would argue that the best content marketing takes a deliberately low-budget approach that emphasizes substance over style.

What's the downside to putting content at the center of your B2B marketing strategy? Well, there's a learning curve, but it's really not very steep - especially given the ROI you'll get once you climb it. So get started with content marketing, and discover where it can take your small business!

I don't have to tell most of you that mobile technology is growing at a staggering rate. But if I did, I would point out that smartphones now make up more than half of all U.S. phone sales.

I would tell you that two thirds of mobile users say they use their phones to find a business to make an in-store purchase.

I would note that nearly half of mobile shoppers have downloaded a retail app.

I would certainly tell you that two thirds of consumers plan to make a purchase via mobile this holiday season.

I would point out that the smartphone market is now larger than the PC market -- an extraordinary milestone.

And I would also remind you that these numbers are just the tip of the iceberg.

10 Ways to Leverage Mobile Marketing

So let's turn to the REALLY important topic here: How will your small business turn the mobile marketing revolution into hard, cold cash?

Here are 10 suggestions that will show you what's possible and what you should be doing to explore the possibilities within your own marketing campaign:

1. Build a mobile-friendly business website. This is no longer an option. If your business is online, it needs to have a mobile-friendly website - period.

2. Consider text-message marketing. Consumers are more than twice as likely to react to a text message as they are to email marketing. Just be sure to work with a reputable provider and avoid spamming.

3. Offer a mobile app. Yes, this can be expensive. But it's also a very effective way to reach customers, drive lead generation, and promote your brand.

4. Appeal to short attention spans. Mobile users are busy, and they're often multi-tasking. Craft your content to reach them with short, highly focused messages.

5. Integrate social marketing. Mobile users love to share information. Give them something to "like" about your content, and turn them into vital allies in your lead generation efforts.

6. Use QR codes. These codes are similar to barcodes; a user can scan them with a mobile device and learn more about your company, products, and services.

7. Extend special offers. Make your mobile users feel special with discounts, reward programs, or other perks designed especially for them.

8. Promote, promote, promote! Whether it's a mobile website or a dedicated app, you need to promote it just as you would any other marketing channel.

9. Respect users' privacy. Location-based services are a powerful marketing tool, but it's also easy to abuse them. Tread carefully and treat your mobile customers with respect.

10. Get ready for mobile commerce! So-called m-commerce systems are still in their infancy, but you need to understand the technology if you want to be ready to exploit it.

This is enough to get you started, but like I said, this is simply the tip of the iceberg. Just remember to integrate all of these techniques into your company's overall digital marketing strategy, look for ways to leverage multiple marketing channels, and ensure that your technology always serves your customers -- and not the other way around.

We all know that software-as-a-service (SaaS) has changed the way small businesses think about B2B marketing. But what's the real advantage driving these businesses to adopt SaaS?

Price is part of the answer. Pay-as-you-go pricing is a huge draw for small businesses that no longer have to worry about hardware costs, software licensing, support and maintenance, or any of the other financial baggage that comes along with on-premises software.

B2B Marketing SaaS: The Real Secret to Its Success

But price isn't the whole answer. In fact, there's an even bigger benefit to using SaaS for digital marketing: It allows small businesses to use applications that only very large enterprises could have used in the past.

SaaS-based demand generation tools are actually a perfect example of this evolutionary process. These online applications include an immense array of B2B marketing-related tools and services. A top-tier vendor in this space, such as Eloqua, Marketo, or Market2Lead, will offer a package that might include:

• Email marketing management;
• Multi-channel integration of Web, email, and live-event marketing;
• The ability to create custom landing pages, website forms, and microsites;
• Tools for creating personalized marketing campaigns;
• Event marketing capabilities;
• Contact database management tools;
• Lead scoring, nurturing, and reporting;
• Social media marketing and tracking capabilities.

I'm just scratching the surface here, and I could name a dozen other companies that offer similar SaaS-based online demand generation products. Some are less expensive than others, and some are more suitable than others for very small businesses versus midsized firms. All of them, however, deliver a package of services that typically cost between a few hundred dollars and a few thousand dollars a month.

A B2B marketing organization might find the same features in on-premises software, but they'll have to add a few zeroes to the cost to get it - and they'll have to pay a good chunk of that right up front.

Picking a SaaS Marketing Solution: 3 Things to Consider

So far, so good. You're sold on the concept of SaaS, and you'd love to adopt a digital marketing solution that gives your room to grow at a fair price. If you're ready to take the plunge, here are three tips for evaluating a solution beyond the obvious stuff, like pricing and support options:

Scope. Just about everybody in this market can support Web and email marketing tasks, and most also play well with third-party CRM and SFA solutions. But what if you want to use the same software to manage an integrated direct mail marketing campaign? How about integrating data from conferences and live events?

There are demand-generation tools that can manage multi-channel B2B marketing campaigns, and some of them do it quite well. Just remember that you'll pay more - perhaps a lot more - to get all of this in a single tidy package.

Scale. Small and midsized businesses don't worry much about how these SaaS-based digital marketing solutions will scale. That's only a problem for the big guys, right?

Actually, you might be surprised how quickly scalability becomes an issue even for smaller companies. That's because smaller companies have smaller marketing teams, and those teams often manage multiple campaigns with lots of moving parts. Select a demand-generation solution that can support Web templates, for example, and it'll be much easier to make changes while protecting your brand with a clean, consistent set of shared assets.

Feedback. Metrics are the modern marketer's secret weapon: They allow you to quantify results and demonstrate ROI in a way that you could never do in the past. That's why it's especially important to look at a vendor's analytics tools. Ask how they track things like website activity, campaign response rates, and cost-based marketing metrics.

Is direct mail marketing dead?

It's a common question these days, and we all know why: Email, search, social media, and other forms of digital marketing are all the rage. They're cheaper than direct mail, they're faster, they deliver better feedback, and they ultimately deliver better ROI.

Right?

Actually, I don't think direct mail is dead yet. It might even be getting its second wind.

Direct Mail Still Gets Results

According to the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), 1.4 percent of U.S. households in 2010 responded to direct-mail pitches. That's down a bit from the 2005 numbers, but that number is still more than double a typical email marketing response rate, according to the DMA.

While those numbers don't directly address B2B direct mail marketing, I think it's safe to say they're comparable -- especially in terms of how they compare to email response rates.

We all know why those email response rates are so low. Bulk email is a saturated marketing channel, and the signal-to-noise ratio is unbelievably low, even for sophisticated online lead generation efforts.

Those numbers don't mean direct mail is a slam-dunk for every small business. They simply mean that direct mail can still have a place in your marketing mix - if you know how to identify, target, and build a trust relationship with the right prospects.

4 Ways to Marry Direct Mail and Digital Marketing

So direct mail definitely is not dead. But technology has transformed the way it works. Here are some specific trends you need to follow in order to use direct mail effectively.

1. On-demand printing. Throw away the cookie cutter: It's now possible to create small, highly customized batches of direct mail with content tailored for specific customer segments or for groups at different points in your marketing pipeline. You'll get higher response rates, and you'll get them at a very reasonable cost.

2. Integrated direct mail/digital marketing campaigns. You can use direct mail to drive prospects to custom website landing pages, social media pages, video demonstrations, whitepaper downloads, or any number of other destinations. This type of thoughtful, carefully-crafted content is essential to identifying qualified leads and setting up your sales team for success.

You can also experiment with new options, such as QR codes, to simplify the process of integrating direct mail marketing and digital campaigns.

3. End-to-end personalization. What do you get when you combine on-demand printing with so many different digital marketing choices? You get the opportunity to deliver a completely personalized marketing experience for every prospect. That's an opportunity that you couldn't buy at any price just a few years ago.

4. Analytics. Now more than ever before, the tools exist to measure the responses to your direct mail marketing campaigns. In fact, it's important that you NOT launch a direct mail campaign until you have a plan in place to track and measure your results.

Like I said, this doesn't mean direct mail is always appropriate for your small-business B2B marketing efforts. But it's important to experiment with direct mail, just as you experiment with social media, video, email, and other activities.

So direct mail isn't dead. And if you know how to use it right, it can give a healthy boost to your small business' bottom line.

By John Leavy

Nurturing your prospects will double or triple your conversion rate. Just consider: The average click-through rate for pay-per- click ads is 1 to 3 percent. The average click-through from an e-mail campaign is between 1 and 5 percent depending upon the industry. Most of the people arriving at a website are not ready to buy. These are people that are showing an interest in your product or service but not purchasing or signing up. You can expect to harvest between 3 and 5 percent of those that click-through. If 10,000 people click on your Google ad and 2 percent or 20 people click-through to your offer, only 2 percent, or four people will actually purchase your service or product. Four out of 10,000 is only a .0004 percent conversion rate. To get the conversion rate up, you should entice more of the audience of 10,000 that click through to purchase your product or service. Remember, there is not an unlimited supply of prospects interested in purchasing any product or service.

Lead Nurturing

So how do you entice and persuade more people to click-through and make a purchase? According to Forrester Research, companies that excel at lead nurturing are able to generate 50 percent more sales-ready leads at 33 percent lower cost- per-lead. Lead nurturing is a process by which unqualified leads are tracked and developed into sales-ready opportunities.

The marketing tactics used to turn these unqualified leads into sales-ready opportunities could be webinars, podcasts, whitepapers and other education-based materials, blogging, free trials, newsletters, or e-mail campaigns.

Thought leadership means you have to have something of value to say. Focus implies that each piece of collateral, whether an e-mail, blog post, or news article, needs to be centered around one specific pain point and include the remedy, benefit, and a strong call to action.

The subject line or story header needs to grab the reader’s attention in five to eight seconds. Don’t clutter the e-mail with extraneous links and other offers. Don’t get off subject when writing the blog post or article. Stay on message.

Natural progression means don’t rush the sale. Design an e-mail nurturing campaign or series of blog posts to take the prospect through a logical educational process. The nurturing campaign should be designed to cause prospects to move down the sales funnel at their own pace. The campaign should also be designed to cause the prospect to make a stronger commitment. For instance, at first the prospect gives her e-mail address. Later on during the nurturing campaign the prospect is asked for her company name, phone number, and a few pieces of information that will help qualify her as a potential buyer.

Measurement is the key to any successful inbound marketing campaign. Measurements give you the opportunity to fine-tune the calls to action, the offers, and the content, which in turn increases the click-through and conversion rates.

Keep in mind the difference between spam and nurturing. Spamming is when someone just compiles a list of names and e-mail addresses (who knows from where) and thinks there’s some benefit to jamming his message down the recipient’s throat. Nurturing a list of names means that those people have, in some way, touched the company in the past. Perhaps they took a free trial, signed up to receive a newsletter, or downloaded content (a case study or whitepaper) off the company’s website.

Nurturing campaigns need to be timely and consistent. Run the campaign over weeks, not months.

Running an E-Mail Nurturing Campaign

As an example, say you run a 17-day nurturing campaign while people are using a free trial of your software product. You’ll send out eight e-mails focusing on pain points, remedies, and benefits and how they relate to your product. The 17 days could look like this:

• E-mail 1. Sent out upon subscribing to the free trial. Confirms they have signed up.
  
• E-mail 2. Sent out on Day 1. Welcomes them to the free trial process.
  
• E-mail 3. Sent out on Day 3. Focus on a pain point/the remedy/the benefit.
  
• E-mail 4. Sent out on Day 7. Focus on a pain point/the remedy/the benefit.
  
• E-mail 5. Sent out on Day 11. Focus on a pain point/the remedy/the benefit.
  
• E-mail 6. Sent out on Day 13. Focus on a pain point/the remedy/the benefit.
  
• E-mail 7. Sent out on Day 15. Lets people know their free trial is expiring.
  
• E-mail 8. Sent out on Day 17. Tells people about a special offer if they decide to purchase the product.
  

In this instance, you write your blog posts ahead of time and schedule the posts to be published as your nurturing campaign unfolds. The posts concentrate on pain points, remedies, and benefits. This nurturing campaign runs for 20 days. People that have subscribed to your RSS Feed will automatically be notified each time a new post is published. A campaign might be:

• Day 1. You write a post that gives prospects the 10,000-foot view of your online service.
  
• Day 5. You write a post about a pain point, remedy, and benefit.
  
• Day 9. You write a post about a pain point, remedy, and benefit.
  
• Day 12. You write a post about a pain point, remedy, and benefit.
  
• Day 17. You write a post about a pain point, remedy, and benefit.
  
• Day 20. You sweeten the pot by offering the first month of service free to those that sign up within the next 24 hours.
  

It’s easy to see now that nurturing takes time, patience, and consistency. The returns will be greater than starting over with a new batch of prospects. Remember to treat these prospects as perhaps interested but not ready to make a purchasing decision.

John D. Leavy is the founder of InPlainSite Marketing, a leader in developing and delivering digital marketing strategies. John consults and presents to Fortune 100 and 500 companies. He is the author of Outcome-Based Marketing: New Rules for Marketing on the Web and a regular contributor to leading publications and nationally known speaker.

By Brian Kardon

What makes a CMO, head of marketing, or any other marketer in a leadership role great?  It’s easy to take a quantitative approach and simply rely on the numbers.  After all, good marketers can help generate a high number of leads for the sales team resulting in revenue growth for their organizations.  But when placed in a leadership role, will these marketers shine bright as compared to their counterparts?  As impressive as good numbers may be, there’s still much more behind the scenes contributing to a marketing leader’s success.  As the CMO of Eloqua, I’ve had the privilege of meeting and working with some truly great marketing leaders.  Over time, I’ve catalogued the qualities that make these marketers such outstanding leaders.  While I’m sure there is an extensive list, below I’ve highlighted six key qualities common to all great marketing leaders.  

Leaders, not managers

The key is effective communication.  Great marketers know how to lead – not just the marketing team – but the whole company, and often, the industry.  They try out new messaging, they tweet, blog, participate in panels, and represent the company’s position in public forums.  Moreover, they know the value of creating conversation vs. purely pushing out self-promotional content. 

Curious and adventurous

There’s no playing it safe.  The standouts try new things – new technologies, channels, messaging, creative approaches – and are curious to see how these new activities perform.  They are OK with “fast” failures – they try, learn, re-do or kill things quickly.  They avoid “slow,” expensive failures at all costs.

Part left brain

The best leaders in marketing have a gift for the analytical – usually attributed to left brain thinking.  If it’s not already being measured, these marketers want to measure it, analyze the data then find a way to make the most of the results.  Marketers are increasingly being held accountable for revenue growth and as a result they’re being asked to prove how marketing campaigns tie directly to revenue.  Anecdotes and qualitative information won’t cut it – marketers now need to show hard numbers and provide real analysis.  Left brain skills are crucial as the marketing department moves further away from the “let’s make it pretty” mentality.

Part right brain

Despite a well developed left brain thought process, the most skilled marketing leaders still find a way to tap into their right brain creativity.  Whether for effective problem solving, imaginative campaigns, or even just to find something new and relevant to measure, the wheels are always turning in the minds of great marketers.

Embrace accountability

The era of the shoot-from-the-hip marketer is gone.  The great leaders are financially literate, command more respect in the C-suite and hold their jobs longer as a result.  They actually get along well with their CFO.  For every action taken, these leaders have data to support their decision, and should anything unexpected occur, they can pinpoint the cause.

Focus on “the business”- not just “marketing”

Good marketers really know the marketing side – database health, campaign effectiveness, open/CTRs, optimizing paid search, etc.  But the great ones are focused on “the business” and are strategic.  Their minds regularly run through questions of growth, price, key vertical industries and revenue. In other words, they think beyond their marketing scope. They have a greater understanding of the overall business goals and therefore know exactly how marketing can help the company reach those goals.

There are many qualities that make up an effective, truly great marketing leader and these are just a few.  What are the qualities you look for in a marketing leader?

Kardon is the Chief Marketing Officer at Eloqua.

By Jeff Moore
Organizations that truly live their mission market themselves from the inside out.  I learned this the hard way. Immediately upon arriving at Texas from the University of Colorado in 1982, I got caught up in the spin cycle that envelops most high profile athletic programs. I fell into the same trap that ensnares most new coaches at Texas. Everyone pushed the notion that our superior facilities and resources gave us a huge advantage. Winning was ordained. My recruiting efforts focused on selling our great facilities, excellent academic programs, and the most beautiful city in America. I had the perfect pitch:  “Come to Texas and be a part of our winning tradition. We’re going to win a national championship and you’re going to play a huge role!”
Although the perfect pitch helped me land some great talent, we underachieved on a regular basis. We actually lost matches to schools with subpar facilities and lower ranked academic programs from decidedly unhip cities. I had been marketing our program from the outside-in. I was selling a beautifully designed package…….but the package was empty! 
It finally dawned on me that to be successful we had to stop talking about our mission and start living it………in real time. I was focused on arriving when we needed to be striving…….every day.  I ditched the supersalesman routine and began actually challenging recruits to come strive with us.  Eventually our athletes owned this “strive together” mentality resulting in a string of overachieving seasons.
Great examples of inside out marketing can be found in the business world as well. Zappos, a online retailer that reached $1 billion in gross merchandise sales in just 10 years, is a good example. Instead of pouring that moeny into elaborate marketing campaigns, Zappos spent the money on recruiting, training, and cultivating superior customer service representatives. That commitment is spelled out on its home page: "Our unwavering focus on superior customer service has allowed us to expand our online offerings to include handbags, clothing and so much more!" CEO Tony Hsieh often ends his presentations with a story that vividly portrays this compelling sense of purpose. One night he and some vendors returned to a hotel room late. Someone in the group was craving pizza and was told that room service had ended.   As a joke Hsieh suggested calling Zappos. Even though Zappos doesn’t sell pizza, the customer rep found a list of local pizza places that would deliver to their hotel.
Now that’s living your mission……......................................from the inside-out!
Jeff Moore is a leadership consultant based in Austin, Texas. e During a 23-year coaching career at the University of Texas, his Longhorn Women’Tennis Teams won two NCAA Championships and 18 conference titles. He can be reached at jeff@mooreleadership.com

By Mike Capuzzi

If you’ve ever stared at a blank computer screen or sheet of paper when you sat down to write a marketing piece, you know how challenging it can be to get started.

Starting a marketing campaign from scratch each and every time is tedious and not a great way to leverage time and creativity, which is why most successful marketers build and maintain a marketing swipe file.

Personally, I have several large boxes in my office where I keep my print swipe files and my marketing radar is always on – looking for new things to add – which might help me in the future (just yesterday I received a cool piece of mail from a credit card company and it’s an idea I’m definitely going to swipe for my marketing).

I also maintain a set of folders on my computer hard drive where I collect and store online marketing examples, like emails and web pages.

I use these swipe files to generate ideas and spark creativity. Sometimes I use the materials for to get ideas for my copy writing, but regardless of what I need to accomplish, by simply maintaining a healthy swipe file of both print and web materials, I can beat the blank page blues.

If you haven’t been keeping a swipe file, here are several ideas to help you get them started.

Offline Marketing (print) – study the mail you’re receiving each day and be on the lookout for unique and creative ideas that grabbed your attention. Read magazines and newspapers and pay attention to the advertisements. Again, you’re looking for examples that catch your attention. Pay particular attention to headlines and eye-catching ads.

Recently I took home several ads, from the SkyMall catalog that you find on every airline flight, because the headlines were so good.

When you attend tradeshows or marketing events, don’t just walk through the vendor area – look for marketing ideas you can use in your business.

Online Marketing (web) – watch for email headlines and emails that grab your attention. Either print them off or store them in a folder on your computer. I like to use SnagIt from TechSmith to capture web sites, opt-in pages and sales letters. SnagIt take a picture of the entire site – no matter how long it is – and I use it many times throughout the day to build my digital swipe file.

The bottom line is to ALWAYS HAVE YOUR MARKETING RADAR SET TO ON!

Finally, one last point I feel it’s important to make – swipe files should be used for inspiration and to spark creative ideas. I do not recommend simply copying large chunks of a sales letter or squeeze page and using them verbatim in your own business.

Mike Capuzzi is a marketing strategist, author and speaker. Since 1998, he has been helping entrepreneurs and business owners improve their marketing and response rates. He’s the inventor of CopyDoodles, software for adding handwritten notes and hand-drawn doodles to your marketing for increased readability and response. Visit MikeCapuzzi.com for more information.

By Paul R. Lloyd

What do you do when your customer base disappears and your sales fall through the floor?

Root Causes

Begin by identifying root causes and performing a thorough competitive analysis of industry trends and changes. Find out where the market is going and why you are not keeping customers. Is your market shrinking due to changes in the industry? Or something the competition is doing? Have they introduced a more competitive solution? Have you reduced quality or customer service? Have you increased prices? Or have you kept prices stable while competition has lowered their prices?

Studying the root causes involves taking a hard look at your organization, processes, pricing, and products. What, if anything has changed in the way you sell your products and services?  Talk to your customers. Why are they not buying from you? Products and services have a life cycle. Eventually something comes along to render your best work obsolete.

Revisit your niche and value proposition

Study the niche you serve. Is it still viable? Is the pool of possible customers large enough to support your business? Or has the market shrunk? Be careful with your niche. The tendency is to expand it to reach a wider range of customers.

Most of the time you are better served by narrowing your niche. It’s counter-intuitive, but it usually produces the best result. The more you narrow your niche, the sharper your focus becomes. With a clear, focused message, customers find they can make a quick choice to either select you or move on to someone else.

Confusion is the biggest enemy of effective marketing. With a narrow focus, you minimize the risk of confusing your customers. Confused customers tend to go away, especially if they are visiting your website.

Deliver on your value proposition

How are you doing on delivering what you sell? Check your quality. Test your customer service response. Compare your prices with your competition. Are you promising something you can’t deliver?

Your marketing materials may be implying something that isn’t true. So check your promotional copy for accuracy. Check it again for any implied promises that you are not delivering on. For example, are you unwittingly practicing bait-and-switch tactics with your special offers? What you consider an upsell from a special offer may appear as a rip off to your customers.

In the heat of the competitive bid process, you may make or imply promises that you have no way of delivering on. Make sure your customer has a clear understanding of what they have purchased.

Re-brand and redefine your market

Brands can grow stale, especially in light of bad press, underperformance or other negative issues. Your company has a brand. You can revitalize it through a new corporate image program and marketing campaign. Give your customers a new way of seeing you. Change their focus from your traditional value proposition to a focus on new or different benefits. How are you cheaper, better, or faster than you were before? Emphasize these improvements in your new branding along with the benefits the customer will receive.

Markets change so make sure you are changing with them. Take a hard look at your target market. Describe them in writing. Does your description point you in new directions or suggest prospective customers you may have been overlooking? Who are your customers selling to? And what does that tell you about your customers?

Who are your competitors selling to? Have they found marketplace opportunities in industries you may have overlooked?

Has the industry changed in ways you may have missed? Look at what customers are saying about the way they do business as reported in the trade publications and websites serving their industry.

Are you effectively using online marketing and social networking? The trend for online buying is well established. Business has moved onto the Internet. If you haven’t taken online marketing seriously or if you have been ignoring social networking, you may be losing customers to the new way to do business.

Review these issues to see where you can make changes to better serve your customers. Reach your customers the way they want to be reached – online – or risk losing them.

Often the issue of vanishing customers is a question involving every aspect of your business, not just marketing and sales. It’s a symptom that it’s time to revisit your basic mission and strategy. Instead of being the death knell for your business, it could be the energizing force for leading you in new directions, new opportunities and new revenue streams.

Paul Lloyd is the founder of Zuk-Lloyd Associates, a marketing firm that delivers solutions, develops strategic initiatives and implements them with a flair for the creative. He can be reached at paul@zuklloyd.com

By Sandra Marcus of IBM

Successful social media marketing campaigns focus on creating an exceptional experience for the end-user and are, by definition, engaging, relevant, trustworthy and portable, following audiences wherever they go.

For example, at one of IBM's annual user conferences for customers and partners, we expanded the typical use of social media and interactive technology to provide an exceptional, engaging and social experience for our audience.

First we created a social media aggregator—a single online landing page providing a live stream of blogs, Twitter comments, Flickr photos, and videos of keynote sessions and interviews from the conference. By mid-event, the site had 34K views of the video channel and more than 20K tweets tagged with the #ls11 hashtag.

We also implemented quick response (Q.R.) codes, helping attendees share information quickly and easily over their smartphones. Q.R. codes were used at all of the booths in the product showcase instead of printed materials. Attendees could scan the code, instantly creating a link in their phone to a website with all of that exhibitor’s materials for later reference.

As a third component to our social strategy, we had Flip video cameras available for attendees to borrow and encouraged them to shoot whatever they wanted—keynotes, small-group discussions, exhibits. We then edited and uploaded their videos to the social media aggregator site for everyone to enjoy.

These tools provided our audience with an unforgettable experience - they weren't attendees receiving information, they were active participants, engaged in the resources. Feedback on our social media strategy was overwhelmingly positive. Our customers and partners appreciated that we made them a part of the conference experience, providing information and details they needed and wanted in a form that was engaging and social in nature.

By Holt Hackney

A little more than a decade ago, Austin marketer Laura Patterson began noticing a growing dissatisfaction between chief executives and their marketing heads regarding the overall effectiveness of marketing.

Soon thereafter, solutions were developed to try to resolve the chasm.

“The problem,” said Patterson, the president and co-founder of VisionEdge Marketing (www.visionedgemarketing.com), “is that the tools were too focused specific aspects of marketing, such as how effective an e-mail campaign was, or whether search engine optimization was drawing people to the site.

“The chief executive responded with: ‘Well this is interesting, but how does it help me understand how marketing moves the needle? Show me the direct line of sight between marketing activities and business outcomes.’ In essence, they wanted to know how to evaluate the overall effectiveness of marketing.”

Patterson saw an opportunity and the annual Marketing Performance Management and Measurement (MPM) Survey was born. She has been tracking this critical marketing issue ever since. Earlier this month, she released the findings of the 10^th annual survey, which includes responses from over 450 international business executives and marketing professionals. The most important finding: Tight alignment of marketing activities and business outcomes separates the best-in-class marketers from all the rest.  In fact, it is the number one key predictor in how the CSuite will assess its marketing organization in terms of its ability to impact the business.   

Other key findings of the MPM survey were: 

• 23 percent of marketers received an “A” from the C-Suite, a relatively consistent number for the past decade.
  
• Nearly 62 percent of the A grade marketers make MPM a priority compared to only 47 percent of other marketers.
  
• More than 50 percent of respondents indicated that they are marginally effective or ineffective at measuring marketing performance. 
  

• They make performance measurement a priority.
  
• They seek out tools.
  
• They develop a MPM approach.
  
• They embrace measurement skills and training.
  
• They use metrics and a dashboard to demonstrate accountability.
  

“There are no more excuses,” she said. “For the past decade, we have strongly believed that clear links and metrics between marketing activities and programs with business outcomes was a critical piece of the puzzle when it comes to the C-Suite perception of marketing’s ability to impact the business. The findings from this survey clearly show that marketers who develop or strengthen their alignment and accountability capabilities are on the right path to achieve marketing excellence.”

By Wendy Weiss

Why would anyone want to continue to cold call? Well actually, because it’s still the most direct and effective way to generate new business. The problem, of course, is that most sales representatives are bad cold callers.

Dr. James Oldroyd from the Korean business school SKK GSB, an expert on the measurement of cold calling, has examined and analyzed the electronic logs of more than a million cold calls, made by thousands of sales professionals inside approximately 50 companies. Geoffrey James of Sales Machine interviewed him and this is what Dr. Oldroyd had to say about cold calling: 

“Most of the growth in the sales industry is in this area. The growth rate of outside groups has nearly stalled, leveling off at a 0.5 percent annual growth. By contrast, companies are adding new inside sales departments at a rate of 7.5 percent annual growth. By 2012 nearly 800 thousand companies are expected to add inside sales departments. Incidentally, even outside sales teams spend a lot of time on the phone.”

So yes, cold calling does work. And bottom line, even outside sales teams spend a lot of time on the phone. That’s why it’s so important to master the art of telephone selling.

If you really want to build a solid sales pipeline that is packed with qualified prospects, there are only four ways that you can do so:

Marketing activities. Most large sales organizations have marketing departments that function to generate qualified leads, to drive traffic to the company’s website and/or to the company’s inside sales team. If you’re a solopreneur or small business owner, you’re the marketing department. 

Leveraging (Referral selling): Contacting existing customers and/or people within a representative’s or business owner’s circle of influence and asking for referrals. This is an excellent way to develop new business.

Networking:  Joining leads and/or networking groups and/or using social networking sites/Web 2.0 resources.

While all these activities will generate leads for sales, only one, cold calling, is directly under your control. The first three are essentially passive, in that once you initiate the activity you must then wait for someone else to take action—a prospect to call in or a customer or networking contact to come through with a referral. Because you have to wait for the results – that is, for prospects to come to you – these processes also take longer to generate sales.

When you cold call you can target the companies with which you are interested in doing business, make a phone call and begin your sales process. While cold calling is not as easy as say, clicking a link on a social networking site, the good news is that cold calling is a communication skill (heavy emphasis on the word ‘skill’) and, like any communication skill, it can be learned and improved upon. In order to be successful in 2011, cold calling must be strategic, targeted and skilled. (Weiss offers some tips on this on her site.) A cold calling campaign that is all three will succeed in developing new business.

Wendy Weiss, “The Queen of Cold Calling™,” is a sales trainer, author and sales coach. Contact her at wendy@wendyweiss.com. Visit her at http://www.wendyweiss.com.

By Kathryn Mackenzie, Editor, Hoover’s, Inc.

If you haven’t heard of Groupon, chances are you don’t spend much time on the internet (or watching Super Bowl commercials). Group buying sites such as Groupon, Living Social, and Twongo, are all the rage right now among consumers looking for a bargain. For the purposes of this article, I’ll use Groupon as my primary example simply because it’s the largest and most well-known, but similar sites are popping up left and right hoping to cash in on this booming market.

While we hear a lot about how consumers are saving money left and right, Groupon also represents a new, relatively untapped marketing opportunity for small business owners who see Groupon as a fantastic way to rope in new customers. Which has been proven to be true, but it can also be a nightmare for small business owners who haven’t done their homework.

First, let’s look at some of the benefits of using Groupon. It is an incredibly effective way of getting a large number of customers through your door, and not just any customers, but customers who fit your target market. Second, there’s no upfront cost to use Groupon, and the total cost per customer is generally lower than other forms of advertising such as radio spots, billboard, and direct marketing campaigns (without the added time and money you would otherwise spend on market research).

On the other hand, when Groupon says they will bring you customers, don’t underestimate them. Stories are popping up every day of small businesses being completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of people who come pouring through their doors during the Groupon campaign. Additionally, group purchasing websites are attractive to consumers because of the deep discounts they offer (Groupon advertises discounts of 50 percent to 90 percent), and many of the same businesses that report being overwhelmed by new customers also report losing thousands of dollars to coupon users who don’t purchase anything beyond the discount.

So how do you know if group purchasing is a good marketing tool for you? There are a few simple tips that can help keep you and your business from ending up overwhelmed and underpaid.

Before you sign up ask yourself if your business can actually benefit from this type of advertising. The longer Groupon is around, the clearer it becomes that the businesses that seem to benefit the most from using the group purchasing model are those that offer services rather than goods. Why? Simply put, it’s harder to run out of a service and you’re not losing the cost of reselling items you’ve already purchased. If you are a tiny, three-employee cupcake shop, and you’ve already busted your budget on the ingredients to create your beautiful cupcakes, and you then sell those cupcakes for up to 90 percent off their purchase price…  you see where I’m going with this. On the other hand, if you own a fitness facility and have been looking for inexpensive ways to boost personal training sales, Groupon could be a great marketing tool, provided you’ve got some extra trainers on hand.

If you decide Groupon is right for your business, do your homework. While Groupon has a sales team in place to guide you through their process, it’s just that, their process. They don’t know the ins and outs of your business, and the best way to make sure your experience with Groupon is a good one is to customize your agreement with them.

One component that is particularly important to those business owners who have used Groupon is to make sure to place a cap on sales by limiting the number of discounts available. Placing limits on the number of times a Groupon can be passed around is a good way to keep your business from being overrun by hordes coupon users. By spending the time to customize your group purchasing agreement, you can make sure you’re covering overhead costs while still drawing in new customers.

Finally, negotiate, negotiate, negotiate. They don’t advertise it but Groupon and its competitors don’t always have set commission rates. In one case a sales person told a small business owner that Groupon would keep 100 percent of the sales the company made during the Groupon campaign. When she balked, he negotiated down to a 50/50 split. While 50/50 seems to be the lowest they’re willing to go, you certainly don’t want to be the business that settles for less by not asking for a better split. If they ask for 60/40, tell them you want the 50/50.

Competition among these websites has become fierce, and in response to that and a few well-publicized horror stories from small business owners, Groupon launched a new website to help business owners navigate the Groupon waters. Through GrouponWorks.com business owners can calculate how many vouchers they should offer based on their capacity, receive specialized industry data, and get advice about how to turn a Groupon customer into customers of your very own.

A recent study of 150 businesses that ran and completed Groupon promotions between June 2009 and August 2010, found that the promotion was profitable for 66 percent of participants and unprofitable for 32 percent. My guess is that those 66 percent that made it work spent some time doing their Groupon homework before they launched their campaigns.

Oh, and by the way, if you were wondering if there are similar group purchasing websites for businesses, there are, but they haven’t caught on quite like their consumer-directed brethren.

At GroupPrice companies can sign up to receive a free email from the website that will show them deals customized for their city. Discounts range from 30 percent to 60 percent and are for such items and services as information technology services, software applications, legal services, and marketing tools. Just like with Groupon, GroupPrice users are encouraged to spread the word via social media websites to entice their associates to get in on the deal.

For small business owners in the UK, Huddlebuy offers discounts on tech goods, software, telecom services, office space, legal services, and accounting. Deals are available for a limited time and there are limited quantities of each service or item offered. What’s different about Huddlebuy is that buyers have the opportunity to get in on deals they missed by requesting that the website contact the supplier on their behalf. Users can also request a deal and Huddlebuy will attempt to get it on their site.

By Dennis Dayman

For anyone who ever thought international borders don’t exist on the Internet – think again. Current privacy legislation in the EU is causing quite a stir and carries the potential to influence marketing activities worldwide. The e-Privacy Directive, which mandates that companies acquire “explicit consent” for the use of tracking cookies, is slated to take effect in late May, and a “right to be forgotten” bill, in terms of online activities, is well on its way to following suit. So what does this mean for marketers as well as consumers?

The EU’s e-Privacy Directive should be nothing new to marketers. It simply emphasizes practices and principles marketers should have been following since the beginning – clarity and transparency. The value of tracking cookies is obvious for marketers. Cookies allow data to be collected on a consumer’s behavior and then marketers use this data to appeal to that person’s particular interests. There’s no reason, however,why this process should happen in the shadows. In the US, most companies already provide ways to opt-in for more targeted information at all stages in the user experience, as well as offering easy ways to opt-out at any time. Simple formatting changes including opt-in boxes, and clear disclosure statements will likely be enough to appease the directive’s requirements that users be fully aware of the information being collected through cookies and how that data impacts the content they receive.

For consumers, however, the directive may result in more noticeable changes. As the use of tracking cookies will fall under tighter regulations, some organizations will still try to skirt the rules and find alternative ways to acquire consumer information. The new law, for example, doesn’t address the use of data collected through web browsers, which can be completely accessible depending on a user’s browser settings. As a result, Internet users will have to be much more mindful of their overall security settings. Consumers may also see longer, more complex privacy and security check lists which bury disclosures and permission options in fine print. 

The “right to be forgotten” bill – though only in its infancy – poses a much greater impact on global marketers. Fundamentally, the act intends to ensure a user’s data stored on social networking sites, like Facebook, can be completely erased should the user wish to terminate his or her account. The hitch is that the bill will hold companies like Facebook – despite being based in the US – accountable for any privacy abuses for users in the EU. On a broader scale, this means that not only will organizations need consent to collect user data, but they will also have the capacity to completely clear that data at any time at the user’s request. Furthermore, the bill aims to shift the requirements for privacy compliance from the location of the organization, to the location of its customers.

Nevertheless, for consumer privacy, the bill would be a major step forward. The “right to be forgotten” would empower users in the EU to hold any company, website, online service, or other entity – regardless of where it’s headquartered – accountable for any unwanted use or withholding of personal data. Instead of solely government-enforced sanctions, users themselves will also have the capacity to sue offending parties.

Marketers need to be aware of these upcoming privacy and security laws as they may have a critical affect on global campaigns. Companies conducting business online must know the privacy laws and regulations for the nations in which they operate – there will be grave consequences for those who do not obey these laws.

Dennis Dayman has more than 17 years of experience combating spam, security issues, and improving email delivery through industry policy, ISP relations and technical solutions. As Chief Privacy Officer at Eloqua (www.eloqua.com), Dayman leverages his experience and industry connections to help the company's customers maximize their delivery rates and compliance. Previously, Dayman worked for StrongMail Systems as Director of Deliverability, Privacy, and Standards, served in the Internet Security and Legal compliance division for Verizon Online, as a senior consultant at Mail Abuse Prevention Systems (MAPS), and started his career as Director of Policy and Legal External Affairs for Southwestern Bell Global, now AT&T.

Photo by planetaryvisions

By Mike Capuzzi

If you were to study any of the great direct mail marketers, each will reaffirm the critical importance of the design and look of your envelopes and how certain design principles can result in very profitable increases in response.  Today I want to focus on an often over-looked, left to the last minute component of many direct marketing mail packages – the envelope. 

Ask any layperson what the purpose of the envelope is and they will typically say its job is to hold your mailings contents together and get them delivered as you intended without them getting lost or damaged. 

And they would be right. This would be the “physical” job of the envelope (and an important one at that), but it would not be the answer we marketers are focused on.  Ask any sharp marketer what the purpose of an envelope is and he or she will tell you it’s to ensure the recipient notices your direct marketing mail and opens it immediately.

This is what your envelopes must do and in today’s world, this is no small task with all the junk mail we receive.  But there is no need to worry because I am going to give you 10 useful and easy-to-use strategies for ensuring your envelopes are getting ripped open immediately.

10 Smart Envelope Boosters

1.  Fun, live postal stamps – actual first class stamps get more response than indicia or bulk rate stamps.  Consider using special edition, fun stamps to get more attention.

2.  Colored envelopes – a smart strategy is to tie into the time of year or an upcoming holiday (e.g. red envelopes for Valentine’s Day).  There are just as many envelope colors as there are sizes and materials.

3.  Non-paper envelopes – there are several alternatives to traditional paper envelopes, including translucent, mirror, linen, denim and clear envelopes. 

4.  Fun, quirky elements – In this day and age, anything that stands out from all the plain vanilla marketing is a good thing.  There are certain elements you can add to your envelopes to make them appear as one-off and individualized as possible. 

5.  Use both sides – printing on both sides of the envelope can be a smart strategy to get your envelopes to stand out from the rest.  Consider adding photos or testimonials to the other side so they will be seen as the envelope is being opened.

6.  Tease with CopyDoodles® - using handwritten fonts and doodles and teaser copy on your envelopes helps them stand out and get noticed right away. 

7.  Capture attention with unique photos – I love using fun, unique photos on envelopes.  Photos are proven attention-grabbers and should be used in your design arsenal.

8.  Engage with CopyComics – Putting cartoons on your direct marketing mail envelopes can be a fun and unique way to engage your recipients, especially when they are personalized to the individual. 

9.  Unique envelope shapes – consider sending your next mailing in a unique sized envelope that stands out from all the #10 and 9 x 12 envelopes that fill your mail box.  One size I like to use is the invitation sized envelope to send personalized mailings.

10.  Alert with CopyStamps – simulated rubber stamps on your envelopes creates a sense of urgency.  Like any of these boosters, these should be used within the correct context of your entire mailing.

I hope these tips have opened your eyes to the rather important job your envelopes have and the major part they play in getting maximum response out of your direct marketing mail campaigns. 

Your envelopes should never be an afterthought when it comes to creating profitable and response boosting direct marketing mail.

Mike Capuzzi is a marketing strategist, author and speaker.  Since 1998, he has been helping entrepreneurs and business owners improve their marketing and response rates.  He’s the inventor of CopyDoodles, the highly acclaimed software for adding handwritten notes and hand-drawn doodles to your marketing for increased readability and response.  Visit www.MikeCapuzzi.com for more tips and ideas.